


Notos

by palimpsestus



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Gen, Kink Meme, Mentions of non-con, Panic Attacks, canon typical stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kink meme fill: Furiosa panics about suffocating, and Max comforts her.</p><p>Notos, the south wind and the bringer of summer storms, comes for Furiosa once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notos

**Author's Note:**

> Kink Meme Prompt was: Gen or Furiosa/Max, Furiosa has nightmares about suffocating [warning PTSD]  
> Because after almost dying like that, who wouldn't? Furiosa doesn't tell anyone, but Max, who decided to hang around for a while, figures it out and helps her through it. Bed sharing and Max murmuring gentle nonsense to help calm Furiosa after a nightmare or panic attack are two of my favorite things, but you know, whatever works.  
> http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=686530#cmt686530

_You have long been a lover of that storm, its blackness and heat, the sand that cuts a face like glass, and the snap of its lightning seeding the ground with molten flowers. Yes, you have long been a lover of that storm._

The wind was an insatiable husband, snatching at her scarf and slapping the flesh it could reach, all the while with the dead man’s voice whispered in her ear like a gunshot.

_Why do you shy from it now, my love? Why now do you turn your face from my kiss?_

The roar was so loud in her ear she could have believed she was no longer breathing, even though her chest burned with the effort to steal enough air from the wind. There was no sound but the storm, not even a wheeze from her own, belaboured lungs.

Her sand-scoured back felt fingertips spread over her skin, weight and warmth sliding between her shoulder blades, and a gentle shove slightly to the left.

She bowed her head and changed her aim, curving her heavy chrome arm over her eyes as she steered into the snapping wind. Behind her goggles she could barely see a thing, just the sand, far off and remote. Tunnel vision felt more like blood loss than a function of the glass, the hammering of her heart blackening the edges of her eyes.

The hand slipped from her back and she tried to stop, tried to turn, to grab at him, but her fist closed over sand and wind, and she could only see sand and red and black.

Her heart was going so fast her hands shook, or perhaps it was that ever present wind pushing her sideways, stumbling further from where Max had fallen, from wherever he was, until she fell to her knees, her chest tight and cast in iron.

“Max!” she tried to cry, forcing what precious air she had from her lungs out past her lips, only to have it stolen by the storm, and whipped too far away. “ _Max_!”

 _You have always loved this storm._ It was as though Joe was sitting on her back, wheezing into her soul and squeezing the life from her.

Something grabbed at her knee and she reached for it, feeling the leather, the forearm, and then helping him to his feet, sliding her shoulders beneath his arm and propping up that old knee. When she tried to walk, Max dragged her to the left, and she didn’t have the strength or the fight left in her to hold course. She let him walk, and she walked too, the world growing darker and darker in front of her eyes.

Until her boot hit something and they both went sprawling onto something hard. Max held her shirt in a vice like grip and jerked her to the side, where she felt something hard and cool beneath her palms. She crawled with him, until he released her, and she lay with the sand piling against her, covering her like a corpse.

Then she was dragged out of the storm, into darkness and air so arid she could only lie on her back, gasping up at the sudden shock of the lack of pressure.

And Max closed the door behind them, locking them into darkness.

She knew she was breathing because the intercostals were burning, she knew because as her chest expanded to the extent of its reach, the belts that braced her arm nipped at her skin, and she knew because she wasn’t dead yet. But all she could hear was the roar of her blood in her ear, the roar of the wind outside, and nothing else.

She lay in the darkness, not breathing, just going through the motions, and wished to all the entities she’d never believed in that she could scream. Joe’s weight was on her chest, the smell of him suffocating her, the bite of the goggles around her eyes was his caress, the scratch of her chrome arm around her stub was his kiss, and the stabbing in her heart was his final blow.

“Hey!” Max peeled her goggles from her head and crouched over her, more dust devil than man, the only clean thing on his face were his eyes, two blue specks at the end of a long cave, the sky above the sand.

Her breath came in shallow ‘ha, ha, ha’s that never left space to exhale, and though she gasped, the air never reached her lungs, never got pushed around in her blood, and she asphyxiated from the fingertips upwards, her limbs deadening with every frantic and desperate gulp.

“Hey, hey, where is it? Are you hurt?” Max’s hands were on her stomach, his fingers struggling to get a grip on the arm’s belt, but with a hiss, he tugged them free and moved on to the next. He eased the arm to her side, his hands exploring her ribs and back, his jaw tight and inflexible. He disappeared from her field of view for a moment and returned with a Davy lamp that he planted by her side, the light flickering as he returned to checking her ribs. “Furiosa, _where are you hurt_?”

She managed just a small shake of her head and Max was leaning over her, searching her face. He planted his palm on the ground beside her head, stretching his bad leg out in front of him, his knee by her shoulder. “We’re okay,” he said, his voice calmer, lower, “We’re out of the storm. We’re in the bunker we found, okay? We’re okay. We’re safe. In and out, that’s it. You’re doing fine. We’re sitting in the bunker. There’s still nothing here, but it’s got walls, and it’s got light. We’re safe. The storm’s outside, we’re safe. You’re okay.”

Walls and light and a roof. How could he think of these things while she breathed sand?

“Hey,” he reached for her, his palm brushing her jaw, thumb tracing the corner of her lips, the tips of his fingers at the back of her neck. “Does this help?” he whispered, stroking his thumb over her cheek again, slow and steady. “Oh baby, please talk to me?”

She found herself just able to meet his gaze, the ‘ha, ha, has’ still shuddering through her. She managed one nod.

“Okay . . .” Max let his hand drift up to her forehead, smoothing her shaved hair back against her scalp, while he took a breath so large his shoulders lifted higher. “Never been very good at talking,” he said, with a rueful smile. “So . . . I am trying . . . to think . . .”

The concrete was hard against the back of her skull, because her back was arching and forcing pressure down on the broken and cracked floor of the bunker. With her metal arm off, she felt lighter, and she managed one, ragged, sucking gulp of air through narrow airways, cold and sweet like water.

“I can talk about you,” Max said, and smiled when her gaze managed to catch him. “That is something I _can_ do. I can talk about you this morning, the way the dawn rose behind your head, I like morning watch best for that, I like seeing you wake up with the sun, and the way you screw up your eyes to try and keep yourself asleep. I like that a lot. Like the colours of it on your skin, the reds and the golds and the earths, makes me want to kiss you.”

She closed her eyes at that and his hand stilled on her cheek, and with agonising effort, she managed one more gasp of the air. This one, she managed to release too, her stomach aching with muscles that were overused and broken.

“You know where we are?” He leaned in closer, a smirk in his voice that she knew very well indeed. She managed a shallower, just as painful breath, and Max continued, “We’re in the pool beneath the vault. That’s why it’s dark. And quiet. The girls are upstairs but they’re not going to disturb is, but we have to be quiet, or they’ll come down and spoil our fun.” His voice dropped, thick as honey and promising mischief. “So we have to be quiet. We’re just out of the pool, and tired, so we’re lying on the stone, and thinking about what we’ve just done.”

Two more quivering breaths, and she managed to nod, to lick her lips, though it only brought sand to her tongue.

“You . . .” Max reached behind him to loosen the straps of his backpack, and draw it around to his side. He rummaged through for a canteen of water, and placed it by her head. “You screamed like a banshee, like you always do,” he said, his voice sandy and rasping, “With my tongue against your sweet and wet . . . uhh . . .”

She laughed, unexpected, and found herself short of breath again, though it seemed easier to drink it in, her chest felt looser.

“Hey, I am trying to be romantic.” His knuckles nudged against her chin, and then along the line of her jaw in a slow sweep. “But if you like, I can tell you about what you did after, how you wrapped those long legs of yours around my waist, and how we fucked very, very slowly against the side of that pool, and maybe you just, you know.” He seemed to fold over on himself, his shoulders tensing up and his hand bracing his weight on the floor beside her cheek. “You do that thing?”

She frowned at him, her breathing shallow and shaky, but slow, and above all, working. She reached for his braced hand with her stump, and raised her eyebrows.

“You know,” he said again, and he reached for the canteen, offering it to her.

She stared at the gunmetal grey and brushed her dry lips against each other, and tentatively nodded. Max’s hand cupped the back of her head and he lifted her upwards easily, swivelling the cap off with his thumb, as those with full mobility could do without thinking, and held the canteen to her lips. The water kissed, all too briefly, and she licked her lips, the salty grain of the storm sticking to her tongue and the soft flesh of her cheeks, and then when he tipped a little more into her mouth, he held her so she could spit the storm to the side. Another long slow sip and then she nodded, and he let her lie back against the ground, and then he took a drink himself.

“What thing?” she rasped.

“Hmm,” he rinsed his mouth with the water and swallowed, then took another sip, eyes sparkling as he watched her.

“Hey,” she croaked, elbowing his thigh. “What thing?”

“You know the thing,” he said, more firmly, and proffered the water again. Capping the canteen when she shook her head.

“I really don’t.”

He scowled off at a shadowy corner, with his hand resting on her hip, a comforting and solid reminder of his closeness. She closed her eyes, focussing on the rise and fall of her chest, the air that she was steadily pumping through her body. Her solid body. Her strong body. A body that could breathe, a body that wasn’t killing itself with every breath.

“That’s what you do,” Max murmured. She felt the movement of him above her, and anticipated the kiss on her forehead. “You trust me.”

She smiled, and reached for his hand, squeezing the fingers. “Lie with me,” she asked. He shifted again, levering his weight onto his good knee to bring him over to her preferred side, moving the metal arm, keeping her weak side to his, left to left, and he hissed through his teeth as he straightened his leg out again. The fall must have hurt him. She lifted her head so he could fit his arm beneath it, and then she settled against him, listening to the steady and slow double time of their breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> This lies some few hundred days after The Things Men Do. There's another prompt looking for hurt Max needing comfort I've got my eye on . . .
> 
> I need some kind of intervention


End file.
